AA: A humoristic account of a belated coming to terms with an ex "best friend forever" who abandoned the protagonist (now 30-something) and left an eternal trauma. There was even a bff tattoo with two cherries which only Madde managed to acquire. Witty dialogue and a good sense of comic timing in the direction and the performances. The soundtrack selections include: Death Team: "Fucking Bitches in the Hood".

AA: Animation performed in a reduced, stylized way, bringing to mind associations of croquis drawings, Japanese watercolours, and cave paintings. An associative vision of learning to catch fish and protecting the catch from hungry seagulls.

AA: A shaman dance to protect the indigenous Sami people. Marja Helander told us that the genesis of the film was the dance of the dying swan on the steps of the Finnish House of Parliament. The film was a year in the making, and it is a statement on the Teno agreement fatal for the Sami people. Two Sami students of the Finnish Ballet School dance, alternating Sami gear and classic ballet wear in the snow and in the sun, from the marshes of Lapland to the concrete jungle of Helsinki.

Jonna Kina: Arr. for a Scene.

ARR. FOR A SCENE
Jonna Kina | Finland, France 2017 | Experimental, Documentary | 6 min
TFF: "Arr. for a Scene is a documentary of two foley artists while they are producing sounds for one of the most famous film scene in the film history (the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, 1960). This performance is documented on 35 mm film. The original film scene will remain invisible while the viewer sees only the foley artists creating sound effects for the scene, such as footsteps, shower and door closing. During the performance, the foley artists are looking straight at the camera. The film inverts the position of the screen and the gaze of the viewer. The viewer becomes part of the scene. The film examines the way sounds are constructed for the use of cinema and what happens when the structures of a film are dismantled into parts." "Kohtauksen järjestelyt on dokumentti kahdesta äänitaiteilijasta, jotka tuottavat ääniä yhteen kuuluisimmista elokuvakatkelmista – suihkukohtaukseen Alfred Hitchcockin Psykossa (1960). Toiminta on tallennettu 35-milliselle filmille. Alkuperäinen kohtaus pysyy piilossa, ja katsoja näkee vain äänitaiteilijat luomassa kohtauksen äänitehosteita, kuten askelia, suihkun kohinaa ja sulkeutuvan oven. Esityksen aikana taiteilijat katsovat suoraan kameraan. Elokuva kääntää valkokankaan ja katsojan katseen nurinperin, ja katsojasta tulee osa kohtausta. Dokumentti tarkastelee sitä, miten elokuvan tarpeisiin luodaan ääniä ja mitä tapahtuu, kun elokuva puretaan osiinsa."

AA: The action consists solely of an American shot of two foley masters (see image above) whom we soon enough realize are performing the foley in real time for the shower scene of Psycho. A fascinating perspective on one of the most famous sequences in film history.

AA: This film started as a memory project in a rest home with four residents with memory illnesses. Concrete objects bring memories back to life. Old books, herbaria, braids, et cetera are examined via object animation and mixed animation methods. Life stories emerge including a lifetime of work as a restaurant waiter. We are made to empathize with ways and circumstances of life that now seem alien to us.

AA: Based on the synopsis of the first Finnish fiction film, Salaviinanpolttajat / The Moonshiners (1907, lost), Juho Kuosmanen has made a film in his own style, an affable farce with a lively score by Ykspihlajan Kino-Orkesteri. The film is fun to watch in its own right.
Several The Moonshiners adaptations have been over the decades in the context of anniversaries of Finnish fiction film history.
I hope there will be others, and one of them could be for a change an attempt to do it the way they did it at the time. We have a lot of material to work upon. We know the original artists, and it is easy to picture how it could have looked.
Pathé Frères was the big company back then, and Pathé had a block booking agreement in Finland. We saw their productions in extenso virtually in real time. We could have a look at the most popular contemporary comedy series from Max Linder to André Deed and see how they did it. We could check the work of Teuvo Puro, Frans Engström, Oscar Lindelöf, and Karl Fager in the theatre and at the cinema. This was the period of early cinema with long shots, long takes, and deep focus. No close-ups, no camera movement, and minimal montage. Prints were struck from the negative and would have looked brilliant since Frans Engström and Oscar Lindelöf were the cinematographers. We know their contemporary non-fiction films, and they look great. The performances may have been exaggerated but they may also have been in eloquent theatrical pantomime in regular farce style. There is a sense of fun in the original accounts of the film. That should be conveyed as Juho Kuosmanen does.

AA: The debut film of photographer Perttu Saksa, inspired by the books and photographs by Heikki Willamo. Impressive shots of seagulls flying against the wind, a family of foxes, a bear emerging silently like a ghost from the forest, a wolverine, and owls. The film grows into an essay on our relationship with nature. We examine ancient rock paintings, meditate them as a way to communicate with the spirits. They are two-way mirrors to the beyond and to ourselves. Perttu Saksa conveys a powerful and original nature experience.

EX NIHILO
Timo Wright | Finland, South Korea 2018 | Experimental, Documentary | 9 min
TFF: "Ex Nihilo is an experimental short documentary about life, death and our attempts to control them. It tells the stories of an advanced humanoid robot, a cryonics facility, where the brains of deceased people are held and of a international seed vault, where crop seed from around the world are held frozen." "Ex Nihilo on kokeellinen dokumenttielokuva elämästä, kuolemasta ja tavoitteistamme kontrolloida niitä. Elokuva kertoo erittäin kehittyneestä robotista, kryoniikkalaitoksesta, jossa kuolleiden aivoja säilytetään jäädytettyinä, sekä siemenpankista, jonne on säilötty ruokakasvien siemeniä ympäri maailmaa."

AA: A chilling black and white futuristic documentary vision intercutting three storylines: the amazing HUBO robot, the Oregon Cryonics preserving human brains (see image above), and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The brave new world does not look inviting. Katri Onnela's portentous score brings it into an amusingly satirical perspective.

AA: A rich array of animation techniques is in use in this dark fairy-tale which starts as a photorealistic puppet animation and proceeds as a journey towads the river of death. From daytime reality there is a passage into another world. The hall of light is awesome.

AA: Sami van Ingen revealed that he did not do much anything to the image of the badly decayed surviving footage of Teuvo Tulio's Nuorena nukkunut / Silja (1937), a legendary lost film, fragments of which were repatriated in 2015 to KAVI by La Cinémathèque française. Van Ingen just slowed the images down 10-15 times until the tempo seemed just right. The ravages of time, the fragility of existence, the fading beauty, and the conflagration of cultural heritage become themes in van Ingen's film. The flame in Regina Linnanheimo's eyes ("silmissä noissa synti on syvä" / "in the eyes of hers / the sin is deep") is no less burning in this battleground of a lost film. Associations runs from Lascaux cave paintings to cosmic visions of the night sky. The cinematography of Erik Blomberg can still be appreciated in these ruins.

AA: The twins no longer can tell each other apart in childhood photographs. Apila since then has questioned her gender identity, and we learn about gender dysphoria. (Dysphoria is the opposite of euphoria). Drawing body contures on a computer screen is a recurrent visual motif, as well as Apila creating her comic strip Moss Dass. The body is a project.

AA: An eulogy for David Bowie. Non-human imagery from The Man Who Fell to Earth flipped over and rearranged. A cosmic rumble is evoked, atavistic forces are at play. Nature footage approaches the status of painting. Experience estranged, senses of perception rebooted. A film of disorientation. We become the man who fell to earth, the alien.

Khadar Ahmed: Yövaras / The Night Thief.

YÖVARAS
THE NIGHT THIEF
Khadar Ahmed | Finland 2017 | Fiction | 15 min
TFF: "The Night Thief is a warmhearted drama set in the suburbs of Helsinki, Finland. It tells the story of a Somali man, Farah, whose car starts to disappear mysteriously at night. Although the car always shows up in the morning, Farah starts to run late from work, and fears that he could lose his job. Farah’s wife is moving to Finland from Somalia and if Farah were to get fired, his wife’s residency permit would be in danger. Due to the circumstances, Farah decides to do whatever it takes to catch the thief. In the end, things take an unexpected turn when Farah finally faces the person who has been stealing his car." "Yövaras on Helsingin lähiöihin sijoittuva lämminhenkinen draama. Se on tarina somalimiehestä Farahista, jonka auto alkaa oudosti katoilla öisin. Vaikka auto aina aamuksi palaakin, myöhästyy Farah silti usein töistä ja alkaa pelätä saavansa potkut. Farahin vaimo on muuttamassa Somaliasta Suomeen, ja jos Farah menettää työnsä, vaimon oleskelulupa vaarantuu. Olosuhteista johtuen Farah päättää tehdä kaikkensa napatakseen varkaan. Lopussa seuraa yllättävä käänne, kun Farah viimein kohtaa henkilön, joka on varastellut hänen autoaan."

AA: Directed by Khadar Ahmed who scripted the interesting Saattokeikka (2017) last year. Based on a true story, the humoristic The Night Thief tells of a mysterious nocturnal car thief due to whom the protagonist almost loses his job because he is always late for work. In the surprise finale something bigger happens than getting to work on time.

AA: A hand-painted animation bringing together dance, aikido and judo, originally an installation, originally vertical. Leena Jääskeläinen believes in the future of the vertical movie. Engaging visually and musically. The attractive score is by Nikolai Kleiman, called "Dance of the Colour Characters".

AA: A black comedy about a rest home where the conditions are so dismal that the residents plan to commit murder in order to be convicted to a prison sentence. Fully aware that the conditions are superior there. "We Gotta Get out of This Place" (Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, 1965, first recorded by The Animals), a big hit in the Vietnam War, could sum this up.

AA: Pasi "Sleeping" Myllymäki's self-portrait for the Venice Biennale 2017: an interview as a self-interview as an anti-interview. Conducted in English with excerpts from three vintage movies made by Myllymäki together with Risto "Legend" Laakkonen they introduce his "glorious studio" (a humble barn), a pole dance, and a ride under ten tractors. Modest in means, rich in wit.

AA: Based on Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's The Coal Coast photographs and the stories of the ex-miner Freddie Welsh, set to sound by So Percussion. An elegy of an industrial way of life, destroyed by Margaret Thatcher. Meditative and poetic, with a sense of the surge of the sea and the patina of time.

Marjo Viitala: Valehtelija / The Liar.

VALEHTELIJA
LIAR GIRL
Marjo Viitala | Finland 2018 | Fiction | 15 min
TFF: "Liina lives together with her mother. Her mother is often working night shifts so Liina needs to get by herself. In the same staircase, where Liina and mother live, is an apartment where a man died some time ago. One morning Liina hears a dog barking from the apartment. Liina starts making up a story of the dog and tells it to everyone during the day. A nightly rendezvous in the dead man’s apartment makes Liina’s stories become the truth." "Liina asuu äitinsä kanssa. Äiti on usein yövuorossa, joten Liinan on pärjättävä yksin. Samassa rapussa on asunto, jossa eräs mies jokin aika sitten kuoli. Eräänä aamuna Liina kuulee koiran haukuntaa tuosta asunnosta. Hän alkaa sepittää tarinaa koirasta ja kertoo sitä päivän aikana kaikille. Yöllinen kohtaaminen kuolleen miehen asunnossa muuttaa Liinan tarinat todeksi."

AA: The story of Liina, a schoolgirl and daughter of a single mother. Liina is a compulsive liar who is getting more and more hopelessly tangled in the web of her fabrications. The barking of a dog behind a door of a dead tenant and the discovery in the washroom that laundry has been stolen lead her to meet a boy without means and addicted to drugs. Fiction turns to reality, and reality turns out to be more complex than could have been anticipated. Well made and intriguing.

Henna Välkky, Eesu Lehtola: Me olemme unessa / We Are in a Dream.

ME OLEMME UNESSA
WE ARE IN A DREAM
Henna Välkky, Eesu Lehtola | Finland 2017 | Animation, Documentary, Experimental | 7 min
TFF: "There is a line of men chasing us through a city where we can’t run. The escape is gruelling, our feet are wet and we drown deeper. We are not afraid, we have seen this before. This film is based on personal recordings of people narrating their recurring dreams." "Joukko miehiä ajaa meitä takaa halki kaupungin, emmekä voi juosta. Pako on uuvuttavaa, jalkamme ovat märät ja vajoamme syvemmälle. Emme pelkää, olemme nähneet tämän aiemminkin. Elokuva perustuu ihmisten kertomuksiin toistuvista unistaan."

AA: Over two years in the making, created and layered using many animation techniques, based on people's accounts of their recurrent dreams, a fascinating montage in the cyberworld, with a feeling of movement in depth, apparitions emerging and re-emerging, "and then I wake up".

Teppo Airaksinen: Katto / The Ceiling.

KATTO
THE CEILING
Teppo Airaksinen | Finland 2017 | Fiction | 15 min
TFF: "On the brink of divorce a middle aged man, Olavi, retreats to his cabin by the lake. After a few days he finds that the ceiling has come down making him unable to stand up straight. His friend Tuomas arrives and insists that something has to be done whereas Olavi is content with the limited space. The two men start lifting the ceiling – but which of the men is really in need of help?" "Avioeron partaalla oleva keski-ikäinen Olavi vetäytyy rantamökilleen. Muutaman päivän kuluttua hän huomaa, että katto on romahtanut eikä hän mahdu enää seisomaan suorassa. Olavin ystävä Tuomas saapuu paikalle ja vaatii, että jotain on tehtävä. Olaville rajallinen tila kuitenkin riittää. Miehet alkavat nostaa kattoa paikoilleen, mutta kumpi onkaan enemmän avun tarpeessa?"

AA: In a way The Ceiling is the opposite to Quadraturin screened yesterday. In it the tenant's tiny room kept expanding. In The Ceiling the retreat cabin's ceiling keeps sinking. Perhaps the phenomenon is a signal alerting Olavi that life is not in control. An intriguing tale of depression.

PUOLI YHDEKSÄN RAIVO
PRIME TIME RAGE
Sanni Priha | Finland 2017 | Documentary | 30 min
TFF: "For every generation there is a war story to be told. The story is told in the evenings.It is like a movie about the good and the bad, us and them, profits and losses.Some images are so impressive that they are turned into symbols and monuments;beginnings, turning points and endings. This is a film about the story of warwhich the evening news told to us, growing up in the 1990s.The story was told with images of burning oil fields. It was reported that on its withdrawal the defeated side ignited the oil wells in fire, causing major financial losses.There were no images of human casualties. The story began when we we kids and it still goes on." "Jokaisella sukupolvella on sotatarina kerrottavanaan. Se kerrotaan iltaisin, ja se on kuin elokuva hyvästä ja pahasta, meistä ja niistä, voitoista ja tappioista. Jotkin kuvat ovat niin vaikuttavia, että niistä tehdään symboleita ja muistomerkkejä – alkuja, käännekohtia ja loppuja. Tämä on elokuva sotatarinasta, joka kerrottiin meille 1990-luvulla kasvaneille iltauutisissa. Tarinan kuvituksena olivat palavat öljykentät, jotka hävinnyt puoli tarinan mukaan sytytti vetäytyessään ja aiheutti näin mittavat taloudelliset tappiot. Ihmisuhreista ei näytetty kuvia. Tarina alkoi, kun olimme lapsia, ja se jatkuu edelleen."

AA: A meta-documentary on television's evening news bulletins. A focus is on the events 25-30 years ago: the end of the cold war, the fall of the wall, the liberation of Mandela. Another focus is on the US wars in the Middle East. A further one is on Finland's years of depression in the early 1990s when many people lost their financial security after a crash of the banking system based on a reckless credit practice. Finland's contribution to the international arms trade is another theme. The film is about the experience of war, violence becoming mundane and a sense of fear becoming permanent through television news bulletins. An interesting film which gives a lot to think about. The burning oil wells in the deserts of the Gulf War looked devastating on the big screen of the Plevna 2 cinema.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: PASI SLEEPING MYLLYMÄKIN AT THE VENICE BIENNALE AND SONG FOR BILLY AT THE AMBER WEBSITE:

TFF: "Activist is a modern Jeanne d’Arc story in which a determined teenager from Finnish Lapland commences a battle against one of the world’s largest mining companies. She fights for the future of her home village and for an outstanding mire protected by European Union’s nature programme. Riikka Karppinen was a 15-year-old schoolgirl when Anglo American, an international mining giant, found nickel and copper deposits under her home village in northern Finland, 120 kilometres north of the Polar Circle. The discovery was described as the most significant of the century. But the ore lies underneath Riikka’s childhood paradise, a marshland reserve that is being protected because of its exceptional biodiversity. Which one is more valuable, natural values or ore deposits that can be turned into banknotes? Is everything for sale when the bid is high enough?The film is a touching and encouraging story about a young miner’s daughter on the cusp of adulthood and her strong will to make a difference. Trying to change things is often tiring but also rewarding, opening doors to opportunities that are rarely accessible to young ones.""Aktivisti on moderni tarina Jeanne d’Arcista, jossa päättäväinen teini Suomen Lapista ryhtyy taisteluun erästä maailman suurinta kaivosyhtiötä vastaan. Taistelussa on kyse tytön kotikylän sekä EU:n ympäristöohjelman suojeleman upean suon tulevaisuudesta. Riikka Karppinen oli 15-vuotias koululainen, kun globaali kaivosjätti Anglo American löysi nikkeliä ja kuparia hänen kotikylänsä alta Pohjois-Suomessa, 120 kilometriä napapiiriltä. Löytöä kuvailtiin vuosisadan merkittävimmäksi. Mutta malmi sijaitsee Riikan lapsuuden paratiisin alla, suojellulla marskimaalla, joka on eliöstöltään poikkeuksellisen rikas. Kumpi on tärkeämpää, luontoarvot vai malmiesiintymät, jotka voi muuttaa rahaksi? Onko kaikki kaupan, jos hinnasta vain sovitaan? Elokuva kertoo koskettavan ja rohkaisevan tarinan aikuisuuden kynnyksellä olevasta kaivostyöläisen tyttärestä ja hänen vahvasta tahdostaan vaikuttaa asioihin. Asioiden muuttaminen on usein haastavaa mutta myös palkitsevaa, ja se avaa mahdollisuuksia, joita nuorille harvoin suodaan."

AA: Petteri Saario's portrait documentary of a fighter. Riikka Karppinen is from Sodankylä where the protected marshland is being threatened by supranational mining behemoths. It has turned out that there are in Lapland perhaps the richest untapped veins of nickel and copper in Europe.

The mining companies bring their workforce from abroad. They do not pay their taxes to Finland. The technologies are ultra-effective, and perhaps in 15 years they would have mined the entire nickel and copper findings and left nothing behind except a ruined wasteland instead of the current nature paradise.

It turns out that there are three different mining projects in Sodankylä. The companies keep getting bankrupt in a few years, being taken over by new ones.

Riikka Karppinen has carried a crusade against the exploitation of nature since she was 15, sometimes against a general apathy and resignation, but never giving up. She is politically affiliated with the Green Party, and at home and at the municipality council she keeps having an argument with her father who is a leftist.

Although Karppinen is a Green activist, she has no problem in entering the military. She is a sporty type and an outdoors type. The military gives her new perspectives to life.

She also enrolls in the University of Helsinki. She comments that the distance has a reverse effect: in Helsinki she feels closer to Lapland, and her estimation of Lapland keeps growing.

The film includes a lot of enchanting and sublime footage from the nature of Lapland: Northern Lights, aerial footage of the magical mystery atmosphere of the threatened Viikinkiaapa marsh, fighting wood grouses at mating time, an owl family, a bear family, forest trekking, and fishing in the Kitisenjoki river.

Sodankylä is of course the site of the international Midnight Sun Film Festival since 1986. We visit a midnight sun event arranged by the Karppinens, a Night Trek to the Viikinkiaapa marsh. Let's hope they can mobilise the film folks of the world to support the great cause.

This film, this campaign and this activist are about eternal values vs. short term financial gain.

AA: G. J. Ramstedt (1873-1950) was a Finnish explorer, linguist and diplomat who mastered Asian languages including Mongolian, Japanese, and Korean. He published classic works on the oral tradition of Mongolian epic poetry and proverbs, and a foundation work on Korean grammar. He was the first Finnish chargé d'affaires in Japan and a translator of Japanese poetry. He published his memoirs at first as a radio series. I have in my bookshelf Seitsemän retkeä itään [Seven Trips to the East {1898-1912}] and Lähettiläänä Nipponissa [An Envoy in Japan {1919-1929}] in a one volume edition of 1967 in the Ikivihreitä muistelmia [Evergreen Memoirs] series. Having seen this film I now look forward to finally reading them.

Many years in the making, the film by Niklas Kullström and Martti Kaartinen focuses on the spiritual essence of Ramstedt's encounter of different cultures. In the film we identify with the cultural passion and mission of G. J. Ramstedt, and it is easy to understand why he could win the sympathy of the cultural figures and leaders of the countries he visited.

Languages are unique vehicles of understanding the world, the being itself, and Ramstedt tried to find his way to the spiritual essence of the languages he studies. For instance via religion, poetry, myth and wit. Schooled in the young academic tradition of Finnish linguistics and folklore studies he was fascinated by other old cultures with deep oral traditions.

Niklas Kullström and Martti Kaartinen's film is full of wisdom and food for thought. Meeting different cultures we need constantly to rethink ourselves. "Best I thrived in Mongolia. Nowhere have I met such good people. If you see a stranger on the steppe it is customary to step down from the horse and wait. For a half an hour you exchange courtesies. Then you may get to the point". Good training for diplomacy.

The main narrative of the film takes place a hundred years ago, but there is no historical footage in the film. All footage is contemporary while we hear G. J. Ramstedt's memoirs and hear the evocative music score on the soundtrack.

The film takes place on two time levels: the past in the commentary and the present in the imagery. But the past lives in the present, and the visuals are full of references to the past.

I was thinking about Claude Lanzmann's Shoah because of the structural solution to avoid historical footage. Amazingly, it can make the film more powerful in evoking history.

We are also learning from a philosophy of time different from the Western one, projecting to the past and the future. The Mongolians soon recognize in Ramstedt an incarnation of one of their own. The film-makers also document Mongolian as a living language for instance in performances of Mongolian rap. Mongolian apparently is especially suitable for rap.

The general visual sense is epic: the immense steppes, the infinite sky.

I would recommend this movie to diplomats, but this movie is about much more than diplomacy. It is about friendship of the deepest kind, the unity of humankind.

AA: A true story of addiction and mental illness expressed via exquisite animation (multi-technique: cut-out, crayon look). The aspect of psychedelia is serious and impressive. Based on a true story, the real-life protagonist was present in the screening to take the bows. *

VILLA MEHU – KADONNUT KOTI
VILLA MEHU – A LOST HOME
Arttu Liimatta | Finland 2017 | Documentary | 7 min
TFF: “Villa Mehu – A Lost Home” is a poetic short documentary about the destructive force of time and the fragility of one man’s lifework. It’s a melancholic journey to the past, a visit to mystical Villa Mehu built by a deceased ITE artist Elis Sinistö. Located deep in the woods of Veklahti, Finland, Villa Mehu served as Sinistö’s home for 50 years and it was also the greatest artwork of his life although it has never got the respect that it should deserve. Today, after Sinistö’s death, it is decaying slowly but surely towards its final demolition without anyone even noticing. “Villa Mehu – A Lost Home” takes its audience to a hypnotic journey through the bizarre yet beautiful world of Elis Sinistö. It is both a tribute to his lifework and an attempt to save a little piece of Finland’s cultural history." "Villa Mehu – kadonnut koti on poeettinen lyhytdokumentti ajan tuhovoimasta ja yhden miehen elämäntyön hauraudesta. Se on melankolinen kurkistus menneisyyteen, vierailu mystiseen Villa Mehuun, jonka rakensi edesmennyt ITE-taiteilija Elis Sinistö. Syvällä metsän siimeksessä Veklahdessa sijaitseva Villa Mehu toimi Sinistön kotina 50 vuotta, ja se oli myös hänen elämänsä merkittävin taideteos, vaikkei se koskaan saanutkaan ansaitsemaansa kunniaa. Nyt Sinistön kuoleman jälkeen Villa Mehu on hitaasti mutta varmasti ränsistymässä kohti lopullista purkamistaan, ilman että kukaan edes huomaa. Villa Mehu – kadonnut koti vie katsojansa hypnoottiselle matkalle Elis Sinistön kummallisen mutta kauniin maailman halki. Elokuva on sekä kunnianosoitus Sinistön elämäntyölle että yritys säilyttää pieni pala Suomen kulttuurihistoriaa."

AA: Arttu Liimatta is interested in abandoned houses. A meditation on the ravages of time seen from the perspective of a former artist's house in the process of being ruined, consigned to fall into the state of nature.

AA: An inspired dark fairy-tale belonging to the currents of the absurd and the surreal. A magic potion called Quadraturin can make the tenant's tiny room expand enormously. But then there is trouble with the Measuring Committee. Laura Hyppönen has the right crisp touch to the story. I was thinking about Polanski (the early shorts and The Tenant).
Based on a short story (1926) by the Polish Russian writer Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1887-1950) who according to Wikipedia was influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson, G. K. Chesterton, Edgar Allan Poe, Nikolai Gogol, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and H. G. Wells. Laura Hyppönen finds him worthy of Kafka; Kafka's works Krzhizhanovsky did not know.

AA: A documentary film with devastating implications. The methodical detonations send remarkable shockwaves. Mushroom clouds reaching the lowest clouds on the sky bring back memories. Time lapse is used. Apocalyptic.

Risto-Pekka Blom: Pysäyttäjä / Interceptor.

PYSÄYTTÄJÄ
INTERCEPTOR
Risto-Pekka Blom | Finland 2018 | Experimental, Fiction | 5 min
TFF: "In 1989, an unknown person halted the column of armored troops at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. On the previous day, a demonstration that originated as a student protest, was violently suppressed by the army." "In democracies, the use of brutal force has been replaced by structural violence, where the power is centered around a small economical elite pursuing their own interests. The main purpose of the political system is to maintain these power structures." "Tuntematon henkilö pysäytti panssarivaunujen kolonnan vuonna 1989 Tiananmenin aukiolla Pekingissä, Kiinassa. Armeija oli edellisenä päivänä hajottanut opiskelijoiden protestista alkaneen mielenosoituksen verisesti." "Demokratioissa väkivaltaisen voimankäytön tilalla on rakenteellinen väkivalta, jossa valtaa käyttää omia etujaan ajava talouseliitti. Poliittisen järjestelmän tehtävänä on varmistaa näiden valtarakenteiden toimivuus."

AA: A performance act, a demonstration, one person stopping the traffic.

PV Lehtinen: Dans på tunn is / Dance on Thin Ice.

DANS PÅ TUNN IS
DANCE ON THIN ICE
TANSSI HEIKOILLA JÄILLÄ
In Swedish.
PV Lehtinen | Finland 2017 | Fiction | 32 min
TFF: "Dance On Thin Ice tells the story of Felix, a twelve-year-old boy who is left to spend Christmas alone while his parents travel to India. A reluctant Felix ends up as an ice cream seller at a deserted swimming stadium, where the surface of the pool has frozen solid. But the swimming stadium is not completely deserted after all. Felix meets a dark-haired refugee girl called Fakira, whose parents were killed in a bombing in Syria. A dreamlike story where two young strangers to each other, a boy and a refugee girl, meet under unusual circumstances. Together, they make the impossible possible. Dance On Thin Ice is a story about alienation and the latent power of being different. The main characters of the film are misfits. In their own way, there is something “wrong” with them, but at the same time, something unique. Together, they right a wrong. The film shows the world through the eyes of a child, on a child’s terms. The themes of the film are tolerance and overcoming oneself." "Tanssi heikoilla jäillä on kertomus 12-vuotiaasta Felixistä, joka jätetään yksin juhlimaan joulua vanhempien matkustaessa Intiaan. Vastahankainen Felix päätyy jäätelönmyyjäksi hylättyyn uimalaan, jonka altaan pinta on jäätynyt umpeen. Mutta uimala ei olekaan täysin autio, ja Felix tapaa tummatukkaisen pakolaistytön nimeltä Fakira, jonka vanhemmat kuolivat pommituksessa Syyriassa. Tämä on unenomainen tarina kahdesta toisilleen tuntemattomasta nuoresta, pojasta ja pakolaistytöstä, jotka tapaavat epätavallisissa olosuhteissa. Yhdessä he tekevät mahdottomasta totta. Tanssi heikoilla jäillä kertoo vieraudesta ja erilaisuudessa piilevästä voimasta. Elokuvan päähahmot ovat sopeutumattomia. Omalla tavallaan heissä on jotain “vialla”, mutta samalla he ovat ainutlaatuisia, ja yhdessä he korjaavat vääryyden. Elokuva tarkastelee maailmaa lapsen silmin ja lapsen ehdoilla, ja sen teemoina ovat suvaitsevaisuus sekä itsensä ylittäminen."

AA: A fairy-tale of two children abandoned at Christmastime. The fantasy and the assured exaggeration remind me of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. Felix is ordered to send ice cream at the deserted olympic swimming stadium in winter. Fakira is expected to do a perilous jump from the diving tower although the pool is frozen. A fine music score, the final piano theme by Salla Luhtala.

TFF: "Being alive and having a life are two different things for Ville Jaaranto. Freedom as his dream and equality on his agenda, he sets to travel across Europe by his power wheelchair. While on his journey, he comes to realize that neither he himself nor the world around him are quite ready for it. Crazy dreams are the best cure for a mundane life."

AA: A humoristic odyssey featuring Ville Jaaranto who has a condition of ankylosis (from ἀγκύλος) (niveljäykistymä) but that does not prevent him from embarking on a road trip on his power wheelchair. Everything does not go according to plan but this is one of the cases where the trip itself is more rewarding than the announced destination.

Wednesday, March 07, 2018

Virpi Suutari: Yrittäjä / Entrepreneur. To the left: Reetta Kivelä who together with Maija Itkonen launches a global pulled oats business which becomes a multi-million affair. To the right: the local entrepreneur Jani Laine gives a speech to his wife in preparation to a church wedding ceremony. He runs a mobile charcuterie and tivoli with his family.

TFF: "Entrepreneur is a universal nature documentary about Finnish entrepreneurs. This warm and carnevalistic film portrays humans in the middle of ordinary everyday survival. The main protagonists come from two totally different kinds of landscapes, from two diffent time zones. There is a scenery of contemporary modern society and just a few hundred kilometres away we find a rural and nostalgic universe with forgotten people and land.Our first protagonists are Fellini-like family, going from village to another, trying to sell meat from a small meat truck and also run a tiny funfair business. The father, the mother and their four children are working together and trusting only in themselves, not in the help of society. While countryside family is counting coins, the other pair of entrepreneurs, the two well-educated women from the capital area, have invented a vegetable protein product called Pulled Oat, and have become millionaires. But have they also made a world a little bit better?"

AA: The director Virpi Suutari expands her boundaries in the new documentary feature film Entrepreneur.

It is a portrait of two enterprises which could not be more different. Tivoli Laine is defiantly traditional. Gold & Green Foods is global and modern. The film is based on a parallel montage. The two stories have nothing in common except for the spirit of enterprise.

Tivoli Laine is a family business on wheels. From their mobile home the Laine family sells heirloom meat and runs a tivoli. The six members of the family form a close-knit unit.

Gold & Green Foods is a success story of Reetta Kivelä and Maija Itkonen who developed a health food product called pulled oats (nyhtökaura). It became an overnight sensation, and the businesswomen became millionaires.

The first story takes place within a province. The second story expands to the whole world. But the film is not about meat-eating vs. vegetarianism.

We get near the protagonists. There is genuine warmth in the Laine family, and we learn about the tragedy of Jani Laine which he has overcome by starting a new life. We follow Maija Itkonen to the maternity ward; during the film she becomes a mother of twins.

A special flavour in Virpi Suutari's films is her talent of being astonished by the unique and unexplained. We see the objective and material surface and sense a profound secret underneath.

Yrittäjä is an eloquent work of visual art shot by Virpi Suutari's trusted cinematographer Heikki Färm. Memorable images range from tivoli lights in a Finnish village to Chinese cityscapes where the pulled oats business is booming.

Suutari's collaboration with the composer Sanna Salmenkallio goes back to 20 years. The new wonderful score evokes a spirit of imagination and creativity.

A deep current in Suutari's account is the change in the conditions of work and society. Within a lifetime a millennial tradition of agriculture has collapsed, and after that the circumstances of industrial work have been shattered. New forms of work and enterprise need to emerge.

For the first time in Finland we screened Štefan Uher's The Sun in the Net, a pioneering Slovakian New Wave film. Věra Chytilová's O něčem jiném / Something Different, the first Czech New Wave film, had its premiere nine months later, on 20 December 1963.

We hereby launched our tribute to the Slovakian New Wave in collaboration with Slovenský filmový ústav (SFU), inspired by the retrospective three years ago at Midnight Sun Film Festival curated by Olaf Möller. In it we are also screening Peter Solan's Before This Night Is Over (Kým sa skoncí táto noc, 1966), Eduard Grečner's Return of the Dragon (Drak sa vracia, 1967), Dušan Hanák's Pictures of the Old World (Obrazy starého sveta, 1972), and Elo Havetta's Wild Lilies (Ľalie poľné, 1972).

There is an awareness of contemporary international new wave approaches: a documentary impulse, an appetite for reality, a curiosity for the life lived today, a sensitivity to the immediate experience. Heavy structures are avoided.

Totalitarian political control is ignored, and an atmosphere of freedom prevails in observations. The fabric of life is honest and complex, not conforming to moral lessons or models. Sequences of the work brigade at the farm reveal a failure of the planned economy.

The film takes place in the city of Bratislava, on the banks of the Danube, and in the countryside in Meleňany.

At the center is the Blažej family drama. Via the 15-year-old daughter Bela we learn to know her blind mother Stanka and her negligent father Jan. Bela's boyfriend Fajolo travels to a farm as a member of a summer work brigade. In Fajolo's absence Bela starts to date another guy, Peto, while Fajolo is seeing Jana, the only girl in the work brigade. At the farm in Meleňany lives also Bela's grandfather, Stanka's father, who lets Fajolo into family secrets. Follows a crucial encounter in Bratislava at the family dinner table. The children take their blind mother Stanka to an outing into the woods and towards the Danube. The water level has sunk, and the pontoon they are visiting is on dry ground, but they lie to their mother about the scenery.

A key event is an eclipse, one like has not been seen in 120 years. There had actually been such an eclipse on 15 February 1961 which perhaps also inspired Michelangelo Antonioni's L'eclisse (1962). Another film which somehow come to my mind watching The Sun in the Net was Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en spegel, 1961). Glasses are being smoked. Lectures on the sun are being heard. Ancient sun myths are evoked, such as the sol invictus of Ancient Rome. The title of the film refers to an image of the fisherman's net at a moment when the sun is reflected in the Danube, "caught in the net".

The fisherman's pontoon at the Danube is a central location. The old fisherman is an invalid with a hook prosthesis in one arm, and sometimes he uses his net to cool a bottle of alcohol. He is "old in years, young for love", with a loving wife.

The farm at Meleňany is another key location. The work brigade's tasks are hampered by rusty machines beyond repair and bureaucratic restrictions about the use of the wood. Instead, Fajolo gets to date Jana, and learn to know the fascinating old-timer Blažej, a driving force at the farm regardless his age and the mindless administration of the collective system.

Štefan Uher identifies with the young, shows a lot of respect for the old generation, and reveals a suspicious attitude towards the middle-aged. All generations are displayed: the film starts with images of eggs of a waterbird by the Danube and children's play at the courtyard (rolling inside a tyre), and it ends with a child's request "bread, mother".

The imagery is assured and poetic with recurrent motifs such as:
– a forest of antennae on Bratislava rooftops
– acts and processes of photography
– photographs as freeze frames syncopating the flow of the movie
– the hand as Fajolo's favourite subject as a photographer
– the eye
– the sun
– light
– the sky
– jet trails in the sky
– reflections in the water

The music is based on a spare avantgardistic concept by Ilja Zeljenka. Ocarina solos are a specialty. A major role is played by a ubiquitous stream of what is known in Finland as rautalanka [literally: "iron wire"], a reduced early 1960s instrumental style rock such as in "Apache" by The Shadows. Transistor radios are everywhere, and they are playing a banal variant of this music. For Fajolo it is a revelation to travel into the countryside to experience silence. There grandfather Blažej even teaches him how to silence a public loudspeaker. Also Stanka tells how she loves silence, "as if I had been preparing myself to this silence forever".

There is a poetic structure in the imagery and the soundscape. The film is rich in density, but not without a few longueurs. At times exquisite compositions seem to cover missing depth. But as a whole The Sun in the Net is a very engaging achievement, and it is likely to gain from revisiting.

A very good visual quality in the SFU print, a couple of minutes longer than the official duration.

10.00 Seppo Rustanius: Punaorvot valkoisessa Suomessa [Red Orphans in White Finland] (FI 1999). PC: Illume. 16 mm, magnetic sound. Screened on Betacam SP. 55 min
Among the witnesses: Ilmi Elo, Eva Erkko.
Score by Heikki Valpola.
Reader: Pertti Sveholm.
"The tale of the 20 000 red orphans who survived the bloody civil war. An attempt was made to relocate and integrate the voluminous bunch of red orphans into white Finland. Children were moved to the province of Ostrobothnia for re-education. Orphanages for red children were established. Some remained with their mother or relatives surviving on subsistence level. In this film the red orphans forgotten by official history can finally be heard."
Remarks by Associate Professor Ulla-Maija Peltonen.
AA: A precious record of living memory of red orphan children experiencing gross injustice at foster homes, schools, and the military. A heritage of harassment and slight.

11.15 Seppo Rustanius: Punaiset esiliinat / [Red Aprons] (FI 1997). PC: Illume. 16 mm, magnetic sound. Screened on Betacam SP. 65 min
Score by Heikki Valpola.
Readers: Eriikka Magnusson, Matti Paloheimo.
Among the witnesses: Aili Eskola, Elli Forsström, Aira Hämäläinen, Eeva Mäkinen, Meeri Lindström, Elli Nurminen (archival tape), Paula Suotaala, Meeri Pitkänen, Hilkka Vuori, Marja Torikka, daughter of Ingrid Kuhlman, Ellen Harmovaara (archival tape), Martta Koivisto (archival tape), and Ilmi Elo.
"A film about women in the Red Guards of Finland in 1918. The first documentary film on the subject".
Remarks by writer Anneli Kanto.
AA: Remarkable first generation records of the female red guard soldiers who not only participated in military action but were usually the most valiant elements in the civil war. After the war they became the victims of the most atrocious retribution. The surviving witnesses who were young girls at the time comment that they chose not to reminiscence about those times. "Only now I have started to think about them". "Those matters were never discussed". "Nobody asked". Not even their husbands and children necessarily knew.

12.45 Seppo Rustanius: Uhrit 1918 [The Victims 1918] (FI 2008). PC: Illume. Screened on Digital Betacam. 52 min
The two protagonists: Erik Grotenfelt and Matti Olmanketo.
"A film about the victims of the 1918 civil war – the winners and the losers. During the 1918 civil war and especially afterwards thousands of Finns were executed. Mainly responsible for the executions were the winners. The film is an account of this time of dread and terror via two protagonists. One was an executioner, another was executed. Both were victims of the war."
Remarks by PhD Aapo Roselius.
AA: Numbers can be numbing. This movie brings us closer to the actuality of the war via two protagonists. Matti Olmanketo and Erik Grotenfelt were both artistically sensitive family fathers. Olmanketo, who belonged to the Reds, was executed. Grotenfelt became an executioner, but in 1919 he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

Saturday, February 03, 2018

The takeover of Helsinki in 1918 CC BY 4.0 N10045. The Parade of the White Army on North Esplanade on 16 May 1918. In front of the headquarters. Source: reproduction negative from glass negative. Photographer: Gunnar Lönnqvist 16.5.1918. 9 x 12. Photo: Helsinki City Museum. Please do click to enlarge the photograph.

10.00 Lecture: Authentic documentary film material of the civil war: truth and framing. Senior researcher Jari Sedergren
10.15 Photographs and photographers of the civil war. Senior researcher Jukka Kukkonen
AA: Two lessons in source criticism. Most of the films and photographs of the events of 1918 are biased. Images of "documentary war footage" are usually reconstructions. They can be rewarding but only if examined critically. When one publishes photographs of the events sources should be carefully identified.

10.45 Reino Palmroth: Sama kaiku on askelten [The Echo Remains the Same] (FI 1968). PC: Opus Film. KAVI 35 mm. 23 min
"An unofficial 50th jubileum film of the Jäger movement and the civil war."
AA: A patriotic celebration of the Jäger movement which was trained in imperial Germany during WWI to help fight for Finnish independence. When Finland became independent without a fight, the movement played a key role in the civil war on the White side. A film full of rousing marches, official Jäger film footage, and a commentary read by the legendary Reino Palmroth himself. A brilliant print.

11.15 Sini Järnström: Hilja, punaisen tyttö [Hilja, Daughter of the Reds] (FI 2006). PC: TAMK Taide ja Viestintä. 2K DCP transfer from Digital Betacam. 11 min
"The 101 year old Hilja Virtanen tells about the events of 1918. War memories and the silence surrounding it affected her whole life."
AA: A moving and harrowing account of the Battle of Tampere, the bloodiest battle in the history of the Nordic countries, as remembered by Hilja Virtanen, 13 at the time. She also remembers the bloody retribution and a harassment that lasted for decades.

COFFEE BREAK. A pop up café (by Itä-Uudenmaan Palloseura) and an exhibition of photographs of the year 1918.

12.00 Kaisa Salmi: Fellmanin pelto [The Fellman Field] (FI 2013). Kaisa Salmi, triptych copy, Quicktime ProRes422HQ. English subtitles. 23 min
Five stories: Jussi Niinistö, Anna Kontula, Pekka Tero..., Timo Hurme, Aki-Mauri Huhtinen.
"La Marseillaise", lyr. Edla Saarto ("Ken oikeutta puolustaapi") sung by Kaisa Korhonen, lyr. Heikki Salo.
"The artist Kaisa Salmi directed in the Fellman Park in the city of Lahti in April 2013 the performance The Fellman Field - a living monument of 22 000 people. 10 000 people from all over Finland participated. The performance was based on the events of the biggest prison camp of the civil war of 1918 in Lahti. The documentary brings together the biggest ever performance in Finland, the stories of five protagonists and a poetic recitative read by dozens of volunteers for the camera."
AA: A documentary record of a magnificent performance which inspired and activated a flood of repressed memories. An event of monumental catharsis.

12.25 Kaisa Salmi: Veripelto [Field of Blood] (FI 2018). Kaisa Salmi, Quicktime ProRes422HQ. 8 min
"A prison guard atones for a family trauma by digging a grave in the Field of Blood performance in the Jättömaa of the city of Kouvola, at the same place where in 1918 first Whites and then Reds were executed. The first public screening of the movie."
AA: "Granpa carried this burden inside for seventy years". Digging a grave as a way of dealing with the burden of guilt. A performance as a therapeutic act. Another collective performance, recorded also with aerial cameras.

12.45 Seppo Rustanius: Sotapapit [Priests of War] (1981). PC: Yleisradio TV2 Dokumenttiohjelmat. 2K DCP from Yleisradio videotape. 37 min
"A controversial (and in the original telecast partly censored) television documentary on the theme of the church of Finland, the clergy and the war in independent Finland from the 1918 civil war until the end of the second world war".
AA: The story of the union of the clergy and the military during the first decades of independent Finland. With interviews with Arvi Järventaus, Antti Rentola, Jyrki Järnefelt, Armas Salmenkivi, Jorma Juutilainen, Heikki Holkeri, etc. The message of the film is the same as Bob Dylan's in "With God On Our Side".

A discussion on the censoring of the film and its political significance. Priest Heikki Palmu
AA: Heikki Palmu criticized the film for one-sidedness. It only shows one side of the clergy while in reality there were many. Truth was more complex than this.

SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA:
1 "Innocence and Panic" An affluent couple, Marianne and Johan, are interviewed for a magazine series on love after having renewed their marriage contract after their 10th anniversary. In the interview, they come across as an ideal couple. Afterward, they entertain the couple Peter and Katarina, who have a miserable relationship. Marianne reveals to Johan she is pregnant, and she winds up having an abortion.
2 "The Art of Sweeping Things Under the Rug" Marianne wakes up one morning determined to not visit her parents for dinner, as the family usually does each week, and is forced to back down. At the university where Johan works, he shares poetry that he has not let Marianne see with a female colleague, who tells him it is mediocre. Later, Marianne and Johan debate the lack of joy they take in their sex life.
3 "Paula" Johan reveals to Marianne that he is having an affair with a younger woman named Paula, an unseen character, and wants a separation. He intends to leave home for months, and shares his frustrations about their marriage and longtime desire to leave. Upon phoning a friend for help, Marianne learns many of her friends knew about the affair before she did.
4 "The Vale of Tears" Johan visits Marianne, disclosing he intends to take a position at Cleveland University. Marianne then suggests they should finalize a divorce, hinting she is interested in remarrying. She shares what she has learned about herself in therapy.
5 "The Illiterates" Marianne and Johan meet to finalize their divorce, leading to more arguments over the division of their property, the upbringing of their daughters and Marianne's new enjoyment of sex with her current partner. After the arguments escalate into physical violence, Johan sadly signs the papers.
6 "In the Middle of the Night in a Dark House Somewhere in the World" Despite having both been remarried to other people, Marianne and Johan meet for an affair. Marianne reveals she had an affair in 1955, very shortly after they were married. It has been 20 years since they were married. Going to a friend's country house, Marianne has a nightmare, and wakes up fretting she has never loved or been loved. Johan comforts her that they share an imperfect love.

For someone seeing Bergman's films for the first time my three recommendations for starters would be:
– Smultronstället / Wild Strawberries, his richest.
– Persona, his most reduced film so far, with an experimental twist.
– Scenes from a Marriage, an even more simple and reduced work, but with an extraordinary emotional charge. It is essential to see the original complete six part version.

Ingmar Bergman like every film director faced a deep crisis in the 1960s as the studio system of the film production collapsed during the breakthrough of television. Bergman made his last traditional studio system production for Svensk Filmindustri, En passion, in 1969.

Bergman "faced the enemy" and turned to television. He had directed teleplays since 1957 but now he started to make some of his most original and deeply felt work for television. He had established a company of his own, Cinematograph, in 1967, and starting with Cries and Whispers he made his films as an independent producer.

Scenes from a Marriage was Bergman's first major work for television. The work is minimalistic. For the first time Bergman based his film largely on close-ups, also frequently using extreme close-ups. Although the series is almost five hours long there are only two main characters (Johan and Marianne) and only few supporting characters. We never see Johan and Marianne's children or their new partners, although they are constantly discussed. There is no music score.

Also the production budget was minimal, and the cast and crew got to choose: salary or percentage. Those who chose percentage became millionaires. Liv Ullmann chose salary, and her co-workers in Scenes from a Marriage established a habit of consoling her with a lunch invitation on payday.

Instantly Scenes from a Marriage got special treatment. The telepremiere took place in Nordic countries simultaneously. Bergman's The Magic Flute was telepremiered the same way in the following year. I watched Scenes from a Marriage at home in Pirkkala, Finland, at the same time as the Swedes saw it in Sweden.

We are now living in a new golden age of tv series. Prominent directors make some of their finest work for long form television. Binge watching is a watchword.

Bergman belonged to the pioneers of this trend, followed by R. W. Fassbinder (Berlin Alexanderplatz) and David Lynch (Twin Peaks). In Finland he had been preceded by Mikko Niskanen the year before. (Many find Niskanen's teleseries Eight Deadly Shots the best Finnish film of all times; on my list it is in top three.)

The impact of Scenes from a Marriage in world cinema and television was huge and continues to be so. Andrey Zvyagintsev confesses a debt to the Scenes in his latest movie The Loveless (Nelyuboi). It has also been observed that soap operas such as The Bold and the Beautiful were influenced by Scenes from a Marriage. (The omnivorous Bergman was also a habitual viewer of soap operas).

Bergman chuckled that divorce rates jumped wherever Scenes from a Marriage played. This is probably true, but the main cause was in the changing mores of the times of which Scenes from a Marriage was itself an expression.

Bergman's quip sounds cynical, but he was not a cynic, least of all just then. He was in the happiest period in his life, having married two years before Ingrid (Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid von Rosen in her previous marriage). They lived together forever until death did them part.

Scenes from a Marriage lives in many incarnations. Bergman published the teleplay as a book, and even the book became a bestseller. It was even published as a Månpocket paperback edition which meant that with this work Bergman was embraced by popular culture. Scenes from a Marriage was also the first Bergman book to be translated into Finnish. It was a turning-point in Bergman's career as a writer, and the book has independent literary value. I have read it many times, and it keeps growing with time, as does the movie. This month Jan Holmberg has published a book, Författaren Ingmar Bergman [The Writer Ingmar Bergman] (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2018), covering a previously under-explored side of Bergman. I have only started to read it, but I believe Scenes from a Marriage was a turning-point at least in the sense that with it for the first time Bergman received a wide audience as a writer.

The original television version was also edited to an abridged theatrical version with a flashback structure. I see no point in the theatrical version. The long televersion is constantly of high intensity with never a superfluous moment. The utter simplicity, including the uncluttered solution of the chronological structure, is the best way to experience the complex and multi-layered emotional evolution of Johan and Marianne.

I just met this afternoon on our way to the Yrjönkatu Bath Erik Söderblom, director of the Espoo City Theatre. He directed the first Finnish theatrical adaptation of Scenes from a Marriage. He reminisced visiting in Munich Ingmar Bergman's original theatrical adaptation in the early 1980s. It was performed as a part of a trilogy of plays together with Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House and August Strindberg's Miss Julie.

That context is illuminating, since with this play Bergman connects with Ibsen and Strindberg's plays about marriage. Another Ibsen play, The Wild Duck, might be also relevant. The concept of livsløgnen [untranslatable outside Nordic countries: "the life lie", meaning that one's whole life is based on a fundamental lie] is always relevant in Bergman, and it is a basic theme for Johan and Marianne both as individuals and for their marriage. The introduction, the presentation of the marriage as an idyll for a ladies' journal, is an excellent illustration of Ibsen's term.

Johan is played by Erland Josephson, who was Bergman's best friend to the end. They met in the early 1940s when Josephson was a schoolboy and Bergman directed him in a schoolplay production of The Merchant of Venice. Josephson played Antonio, the merchant. Bergman opened Erland's eyes for a theatrical career. Bergman was a family friend of the Josephsons, an illustrious Jewish cultural family of poets, painters, musicians, booksellers and Strindberg experts. Erland became a writer, director and theatre director himself. In Scenes from a Marriage he got his first starring role in a Bergman film.

Marianne is played by Liv Ullmann, Bergman's muse, "my Stradivarius" since Persona and until the end. Liv Ullmann's performance as Marianne belongs to the most extraordinary in the history of the cinema.

As his last work as a director of moving images Bergman directed Saraband, a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage, starring Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann. The title Saraband is a reference to Johann Sebastian Bach's cello suites.

Albert Schweitzer stated that Bach played four hands with God. Henning Mankell, Bergman's son-in-law, commented that Bergman played four hands with Bach.

About Me

Antti Alanen (born 1955) is Film Programmer at National Audiovisual Institute (Finland), which runs the Cinema Orion in Helsinki. This diary is an irregular notebook and scrapbook of rough notes on films and related matters. Spoiler alert: I spoil everything because for me the plot and the conclusion are essential to discuss!

Jazz Record of the Week 29/2017

Jazz Record of the Week 29/2017

Freddie Redd Quartet: The Music from The Connection [1960] (Freddie Redd Six Classic Albums 2/6)

Jazz Record of the Week 29/2017

Introducing Freddie Redd (Freddie Redd Six Classic Albums 1/6)

Jazz Record of the Week 28/2017

Kenny Dorham: Jazz Contrasts

Jazz Record of the Week 20/2017

Joe Henderson: Page One

Jazz Record of the Week 17/2017

Miroslav Vitouš: The Bass

Jazz Records of the Week 16/2017

Billie Holiday: All or Nothing at All (5 Original Albums 5/5)

Jazz Records of the Week 16/2017

Billie Holiday: Stay with Me (5 Original Albums 4/5)

Jazz Records of the Week 16/2017

Billie Holiday: Songs for Distingué Lovers (5 Original Albums 3/5)

Jazz Records of the Week 16/2017

Billie Holiday: Body and Soul (5 Original Albums 2/5)

Jazz Records of the Week 16/2017

Billie Holiday: Lady Sings the Blues (5 Original Albums Box Set 1/5)

Jazz Record of the Week 14/2017

The Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin: The Inner Mounting Flame

Jazz Record of the Week 13/2017

Eero Koivistoinen: For Children

Jazz Record of the Week 8/2017

John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman

Jazz Record of the Week 7/2017

Duke Ellington and His Orchestra: In a Mellotone

Jazz Record of the Week 6/2017

Duke Ellington: Piano Reflections

Jazz Record of the Week 5/2017

Miles Davis: Bitches Brew

Jazz Record of the Week 4/2017

Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus

Jazz Record of the Week 3/2017

Dollar Brand Quartet: Africa – Tears and Laughter

Jazz Record of the Week 52/2016

Albert Ayler: Goin' Home

Jazz Record of the Week 49/2016

Charles Lloyd: Forest Flower, live at Monterey

Jazz Record of the Week 48/2016

Sinikka Oksanen, Antero Stenberg, Radio Sessions 1959-1966

Jazz Record of the Week 47/2016

Django Reinhardt Vol. 6: 1940: Nuages

Jazz Record of the Week 43/2016

The Essence of Louis Armstrong (Phontastic, Sweden, 1987)

Jazz Record of the Week 42/2016

Tomasz Stańko: Balladyna

Jazz Record of the Week 39/2016

Cannonball Adderley: Somethin' Else

Jazz Record of the Week 38/2016

Tommy Flanagan Trio: Overseas

Jazz Record of the Week 37/2016

Miles Davis: Miles Smiles

Jazz Record of the Week 36/2016

Red Garland Trio: Groovy

Jazz Record of the Week 35/2016

John Coltrane: My Favorite Things

Jazz Record of the Week 34/2016

The Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time Out

Jazz Record of the Week 33/2016

Christian Schwindt Quintet: For Friends and Relatives

Jazz Record of the Week 32/2016

Carola & Heikki Sarmanto Trio

Jazz Record of the Week 25/2016

Cecil Taylor: Silent Tongues

Jazz Record of the Week 24/2016

Sonny Rollins: A Night at the Village Vanguard (1957, 2 cd reissue 2016)

Jazz Record of the Week 23/2016

Charlie Mingus: Blues & Roots

Jazz Record of the Week 22/2016

Mal Waldron: Moods

Jazz Record of the Week 21/2016

Django Bates: Belovèd Bird

Jazz Record of the Week 20/2016

Jacques Loussier Trio: The Original Play Bach Vols. 1 & 2

Jazz Record of the Week 19/2016

Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges: Side by Side

Jazz Record of the Week 18/2016

Ray Charles: Genius+Soul=Jazz. Complete 1956-1960 Sessions with Quincy Jones (Genius+Soul=Jazz, The Genius of Ray Charles, The Genius Hits the Road, and from The Great Ray Charles and The Genius After Hours)